BUILDING THE SUIT AKA SILKREELING STRENGTH. BASICS. In a sense, strengthening the suit can be imagined as using a full-body dance-leotard, but you have to imagine that there are small muscles built into the fabric of the suit. Generally speaking, the imaginary muscles layers/sheets go in directions along the front and undersides of the body for contraction and along the back and upper/outer sides for expanding and lifting the body. To engage the muscle sheet of the suit, the suit needs to be slightly stretched (for a no-slack connection) and it helps to then inhale with a reverse breath and sort of inflate the body/suit so that there is indeed no slack. With no slack, the fabric of the whole body's "suit" can be used to twist an object in the hands. Even the suit around the legs is an important area to twist as an additive force to the whole suit. The general rule, using a twist like in the video below (where he breaks the limb) is to take out the slack in the sui...
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The Model of the Imaginary "Suit" I tend to use a cartoonish model in my head about the body being covered with an unwrinkled lycra "suit" that is somewhat elastic (like a leotard), but which can also actively contract-inward toward the torso/center along the limbs as we inhale and which can also tighten and contract-against the skin as we exhale. This "suit" supplements our normal strength both by supporting the muscles as they act and by adding to the overall strength when the suit moves and twists as a whole unit. The imaginary "suit" generally supports the muscle-tendon ("Sinew") channels, in terms of its contractions, but the "suit" also acts as a whole-body elastic covering that you can store elasticity in by twisting/bending-joints and inhaling: you can release elasticity by unwinding/unbending and exhaling. The "suit" follows the directions of forces that the muscle-tendon channels delineate: Opening ...
Breath, Qi, Yi, Dantian & Kidneys Jan 30, 2021 Breath, specifically reverse-breathing , is used to condition the respiration part of the involuntary/voluntary tissues associated with breath and body movement. Reverse-breathing/'moving the dantian ' is used to pull those tissues, although not all of those breathing-related tissues are passive: they can be actively contracted because the respiration-related tissues are partially controlled by the motor cortex (voluntary), in addition to the brain-stem (involuntary). Movement and the intent, or "yi" , is also used to condition the respiration-related tissues. However, a point to note is that a person cannot develop the dantian without both reverse-breathing and the movement and stretching of the respiration-related tissues. Full development of the dantian will include the winding motion of silkreeling . The tensile-elastic tissues (aka the "qi-tissues" or "qi") are what connect the dantian at...
QI- TISSUES AND DANTIAN: OPINION PIECE There's a quick way to feel the actions of the "qi-tissues" of the face (as opposed to the topic of an etheric qi, which is a different topic). Close your mouth and inhale about half-way and then stop and try to pull the remainder of the breath through the skin of your cheeks. Of course, you can't really pull air in through the cheeks, but by imagining that the cheeks are like wet neoprene fabric and you're trying to pull air through them, the subconscious mind will trigger the involuntary muscles which would partake in such an action. Suck hard and you should feel the skin of the cheeks pulling inward. If you open your mouth and attempt to suck in the skin of the cheeks in the same way, it's hard to do. Because the involuntary-muscle/fascia tissue is difficult to control with the mouth open, most breathing exercises involve keeping the mouth shut, tongue-tip on upper palate, and inhaling through the nose. If you...
Snow Shoveling Practice We've had several snows in the last few weeks and I always enjoy the workout in the fresh, cold air. Snow shoveling gives me a good chance to practice some basics and get some dantian training in, so I thought I'd give my perspective on the possibilities while shoveling. First of all, when I scoop the snow and pick it up, I try to use power mostly from the torso and the weight-shift of the body; not so much arms. I'm very aware of where my weight is and how it moves over my feet. Secondly, when I pick up the loaded shovel and hold it, I am very careful that all forces are resting on the soles of my feet and that my source of power is the soles of my feet, not my arms. Keeping all sources of forces from the soles of your feet is "sinking your qi". No matter what you do in your movement, you should always keep the source of your forces at the soles of your feet. Third, when I actually throw the snow with the shovel, at the momen...
Qi Ruminations Jan 22, 2021 Qi is a pretty old term, going back at least to the fifth century, B.C. in China. That long ago, there was not much in the way of science to explain how the world worked, so the ancient Chinese devised their own paradigm in a sort of "Theory of Everything": they used qi as a building block for their hypothesis. If you look at some of the earliest, primitive drawings in China that show the flow of forces in the human body, you can see the beginnings of the so-called acupuncture meridians through which qi supposedly flows. The earliest drawings of force paths were crude and there were a limited number of recognized channels or force flow. The original force-flow lines were probably delineations of the muscles and tendon connections that support strength along different facets of the body. The Chinese, though, recognized something that we in the West seem to have missed, early on. ...
REVERSE BREATHING, EMBRYONIC BREATHING, EARLY HEAVEN BREATHING, PRE-NATAL BREATHING, AND SO ON. When you do the full Reverse Breathing, you pull the abdomen in slightly with the inhale (to constrain space and build up pressure) and you lift the perineum/anus area upward toward the Mingmen/lower-back. This action serves to pull inward and tauten the tissues all the way to the fingers and toes, once you've begun to develop those tissues from use. The inhale is an Open movement and it is pushed up the back. When you exhale in reverse breathing, you let the pressure area in your lower-back drop forward with the stomach/belly dropping frontward and downward, and your tissue either relaxing or, if you're exerting force, contracting on the exhale. The exhale is a Closing movement and is part of the flow of tension/forces down the front of the body in the Microcosmic Orbit. Over a period of time with this respiration maneuver, the abdomen area and the kidney area become quite stron...